English
 
Help Privacy Policy Disclaimer
  Advanced SearchBrowse

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Released

Journal Article

Updated Assessment of Temperature Extremes over the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) Region from Observational and CMIP5 Data

MPS-Authors
/persons/resource/persons101104

Lelieveld,  Jos
Atmospheric Chemistry, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Max Planck Society;

External Resource
No external resources are shared
Fulltext (restricted access)
There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.
Fulltext (public)
There are no public fulltexts stored in PuRe
Supplementary Material (public)
There is no public supplementary material available
Citation

Ntoumos, A., Hadjinicolaou, P., Zittis, G., & Lelieveld, J. (2020). Updated Assessment of Temperature Extremes over the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) Region from Observational and CMIP5 Data. Atmosphere, 11(8): 813. doi:10.3390/atmos11080813.


Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0007-4F6E-7
Abstract
The objective of this analysis is to provide an up-to-date observation-based assessment of the evolution of temperature extremes in the Middle East–North Africa (MENA) region and evaluate the performance of global climate model simulations of the past four decades. A list of indices of temperature extremes, based on absolute level, threshold, percentile and duration is used, as defined by the Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI). We use daily near-surface air temperature (Tmax and Tmin) to derive the indices of extremes for the period 1980–2018 from: (i) re-analyses (ERA-Interim, MERRA-2) and gridded observational data (Berkeley Earth) and (ii) 18 CMIP5 model results combining historical (1950–2005) and scenario runs (2006–2018 under RCP 2.6, RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5). The CMIP5 results show domain-wide strong, statistically significant warming, while the observation based ones are more spatially variable. The CMIP5 models capture the climatology of the hottest areas in the western parts of northern Africa and the Gulf region with the thewarmest day (TXx) > 46 °C and warmest night (TNx) > 33 °C. For these indices, the observed trends are about 0.3–0.4 °C/decade while they are 0.1–0.2 °C/decade stronger in the CMIP5 results. Overall, the modeled climate warming up to 2018, as reflected in the indices of temperature extremes is confirmed by re-analysis and observational data.